The Web of Language

Learning not to curse in Arizona

debaron@illinois.edu — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:45:00 CST

The Arizona State Senate is considering a proposal to fire teachers who swear. SB 1467 bans their use of any words that would violate FCC regulations against obscenity, indecency, and profanity on broadcast radio and television. A teacher would be suspended without pay after the first offence, fired after the third. Employers would also have the option of dismissing an instructor at the first curse.

State Supreme Court bars "Running while Spanish" in Arizona

debaron@illinois.edu — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:45:00 CST

For perhaps the first time ever, a candidate was struck from an Arizona ballot for poor English. Judge John Nelson, of the Yuma County Superior Court, ruled that Alejandrina Cabrera cannot run for city council in the border town of San Luis because she doesn’t know enough English to fulfill her duties. The State Supreme Court upheld Nelson's decision. But the voters, not the courts, should decide if she should be on the city council.

Dictionary droids write definitions untouched by human hands

debaron@illinois.edu — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:45:00 CST

The top language stories of 2011

debaron@illinois.edu — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:15:00 CST

2011 was a big year for language in the news.

Defining "anchor baby"

debaron@illinois.edu — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:15:00 CST

The American Heritage Dictionary, responding to criticism in what may well be record time for any dictionary, dramatically revised its recently-published definition of "anchor baby" to mark the term as offensive.

The Word of the Year for 2011 is "volatility"

debaron@illinois.edu — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:15:00 CST

The Web of Language Word of the Year for 2011 is "volatility." Volatility may not be trendy like "occupy" or "Arab Spring," but it's the one word that characterizes the bipolar mood of 2011 in everything from politics to economics. Volatility describes the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; scandals in college sports and investment banking; the Republican presidential scramble and the Greek debt crisis; regime change in Libya and in Italy; the Iranian nuclear build-up and the Fukushima nuclear melt-down. Throughout the year, the Dow Jones Index has been the poster-child for volatility, jumping up and down by hundreds of points like a high-stakes game of Chutes and Ladders. Indeed, given the daily shake ups not just of the year that was, but of the ten years since 9/11, volatility could well be the word of the decade, and with no end to volatility in sight, it could be the word for the entire twenty-first century.

How to save an endangered language

debaron@illinois.edu — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:01:16 CST

There are roughly 7,000 languages spoken around the globe today. Five hundred years ago there were twice as many, but the rate of language death is accelerating. With languages disappearing at the rate of one every two weeks, in ninety years half of today's languages will be gone. Mostly it's the little languages, those with very few speakers, that are dying out, but language death can hit big languages as well as little and mid-sized ones. And it can hit those big languages pretty hard. Sure, languages like Degere and Vuna are disappearing in Kenya, Jeju in Korea, Manchu in China. And sure, Nigerians complain that Yoruba is fast giving way to English. But language-watchers warn that English itself may have entered a steep and potentially irreversible decline in both its native and its adoptive country.

Occupy Wall Street: Can the revolution be trademarked?

debaron@illinois.edu — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:15:00 CDT

Psst, wanna buy a hot slogan? "Occupy Wall Street," the protest that put "occupy" on track to become the 2011 word of the year, could be derailed by a Long Island couple seeking to trademark the movement's name.

The laws of English punctuation

debaron@illinois.edu — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 15:45:00 CDT

Here's an SAT-type question for you.

The last print dictionary

debaron@illinois.edu — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 23:15:00 CDT

The publicity packet that comes with my advance copy of the American Heritage Dictionary, 5th ed., asks, in very big print, "Will this be the last print dictionary ever made?"

Resistance may be futile: Are there alternatives to Global English?

debaron@illinois.edu — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:15:00 CDT

English is a world language. Once an insignificant set of immigrant dialects on an obscure island in the rainswept North Sea, English is now the de facto language of multinational business, of science and technology, and of rock 'n' roll. Non-English speakers around the globe seem to be learning English as fast as they can. Plus there are more than three times as many English articles in Wikipedia as there are German, the second-biggest language of the online encyclopedia. When it comes to the global domination of English, resistance may be futile.

The only linguistic impact of 9/11 is 9/11 itself

debaron@illinois.edu — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:15:00 CDT

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 happened ten years ago, and although everybody remembers what they were doing at that flashbulb moment, and many aspects of our lives were changed by those attacks, from traveling to shopping to going online, one thing stands out: the only significant impact that 9/11 has had on the English language is 9/11 itself.

New words are great for back to school

debaron@illinois.edu — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:30:00 CDT

It's back to school, and that means it's time for dictionaries to trot out their annual lists of new words. This week, dictionary-maker Merriam-Webster released a list of 150 words just added to its New Collegiate Dictionary for 2011, including "cougar," a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man, "boomerang child," a young adult who returns to live at home for financial reasons, and "social media"--if you don't know what that means, then you're still living in the last century. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/newwords11.htm)

The Web of Language Fifth Anniversary

debaron@illinois.edu — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:00:00 CDT

The Web of Language is five years old today.

Facebook and your health: A Dr. Grammar Special Report

debaron@illinois.edu — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:15:00 CDT

Forget about radiation from cell phones: the real digital killer turns out to be Facebook. Larry Rosen, a psychologist at Cal State Dominguez Hills, has shown that using Facebook can be hazardous to your health.

That ugly Americanism? It may well be British.

debaron@illinois.edu — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:15:00 CDT

Matthew Engel is a British journalist who doesn't like Americanisms. The Financial Times columnist told BBC listeners that American English is an unstoppable force whose vile, ugly, and pointless new usages are invading England "in battalions." He warned readers of his regular FT column that American imports like truck, apartment, and movies are well on their way to ousting native lorries, flats, and films.

Computers remember so you don't have to

debaron@illinois.edu — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:15:00 CDT

Imagine this scenario: You're on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and you decide to "phone a friend" for help with that million-dollar question. Only you can't remember the number. You look helplessly into the camera, shrug, and say, "I call him every day, but he's on my contacts so I just click the link, and I guess I never bothered to memorize his number, haha." "That's some expensive haha," says the host, waving his cigar, followed by, "O.K., George, who's our next contestant?" Now a research report in the journal Science suggests that smartphones, along with computers, tablets, and the internet, are weakening our memories. This has implications not just for the future of quiz shows--most of us can't compete against computers on Jeopardy--but also for the way we deal with information: instead of remembering something, we remember how to look it up. Good luck with that when the internet is down.

Are laws requiring English signs discriminatory?

debaron@illinois.edu — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:45:00 CDT

English on business signs? Its the law in New York City. According to the "true name law," passed back in 1933, the name of any store must "be publicly revealed and prominently and legibly displayed in the English language either upon a window . . . or upon a sign conspicuously placed upon the exterior of the building" (General Business Laws, Sec. 9-b, Art. 131).

Content-free prose: The latest threat to writing or the next big thing?

debaron@illinois.edu — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:15:00 CDT

Webster's lays down the law

debaron@illinois.edu — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:45:00 CDT

How a bill becomes a law 2.0: A high-tech president renews the Patriot Act by autopen

debaron@illinois.edu — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:15:00 CDT

Teaching commas won't help

debaron@illinois.edu — Sat, 14 May 2011 15:00:00 CDT

The most human computer?

debaron@illinois.edu — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 23:30:00 CDT

Each year there's a contest at the University of Exeter to find the most human computer. Not the computer that looks most like you and me, or the computer that can beat all comers on Jeopardy, but the one that can convince you that you're talking to another human being instead of a machine. To be considered most human, the computer has to pass a Turing test, named after the British mathematician Alan Turing, who suggested that if someone talking to another person and to a computer couldn't tell which was which, then that computer could be said to think. And thinking, in turn, is a sign of being human.

English-only in the exit row

debaron@illinois.edu — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 23:00:00 CDT

OED hearts OMG

debaron@illinois.edu — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:30:00 CDT

House Passes H.R. 401, a Bill to Ban Texting in Spanish

debaron@illinois.edu — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:00:00 CDT

Special to the Web of Language Washington, D.C., April 1, 2011. The House of Representatives passed a bill today to ban text messages in Spanish. The bill, known as the "Text in English Act of 2011" (H.R. 401), amends the Telecommunications Act of 1996 by prohibiting text messages in Spanish. It is sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa), and is co-sponsored by thirty-seven other Republican members of the House. The bill would go a long way toward protecting English, which is becoming an endangered language in the United States, Speaker of the House John Boehner told reporters after the bill's passage. The bill bans texting in other languages besides Spanish, but it protects texting in Native American languages such as Navajo and Wampanoag, Boehner said. Democrats opposing the measure pointed out that no one has spoken Wampanoag since the British banned the language in Massachusetts after King Philip's War in the 1760s.

Happy birthday OK: the world's most-popular word turns 172

debaron@illinois.edu — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:30:00 CDT

By rights, OK should not have become the world's most popular word. It was first used as a joke in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, a shortening of the phrase "oll korrect," itself an incorrect spelling of "all correct." The joke should have run its course, and OK should have been forgotten, just like we forgot the other initialisms appearing in newspapers at the time, such as O.F.M, 'Our First Men,' A.R., 'all right,' O.W., 'oll wright,' K.G., 'know good,' and K.Y., 'know yuse.' Instead, here we are celebrating OK's 172nd birthday, wondering why the word became a lexical universal instead of a one day wonder. Most of the "abracadabraisms" popular among journalists in 1839 are long gone, but OK stuck around. It didn't go viral right away, perhaps because the first virus wouldn't be discovered for another 60 years, but unlike A.R. and K.Y., OK managed to spread beyond comic articles in newspapers, to become a word on almost everybody's lips. For that to happen, we had to forget what OK originally meant, a jokey informal word indicating approval, and then we had to repurpose it to mean almost anything, or in some cases, almost nothing at all.

The e-book dilemma: should you rent or own?

debaron@illinois.edu — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:45:00 CST

Readers of e-books are facing a dilemma: should they rent or own? If you buy an e-book for your Kindle or iPad, chances are you're just renting the book, not purchasing it outright. Readers used to owning books find the idea of book rental strange, but if digital book distributors have their way, owning an e-book is going to be less and less of an option both for individual readers and for libraries. If you read the EULA (end user license agreement) when you buy an e-book, you'll find that Amazon and Apple actually retain the rights to the titles that they sell. The e-book that you download for a fee is DRM (digital-rights-managed, or licensed), e-book jargon for renting, and like any rental, restrictions will apply.

Take the National Grammar Day Quiz

debaron@illinois.edu — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:00:00 CST

National Grammar Day rolls around again on March 4. It's a time for rejoicing, when everybody goes out and tells someone else what's wrong with their speech or writing. Wear good sneakers, and be prepared to run away really, really fast. Last year I worried whether anybody cared about National Grammar Day. I mean, I'm not observant, but there are plenty of people who believe there's only one true way to parse a sentence and who can't wait to celebrate this day of obligation by reading the dictionary (yes, there is only one dictionary, and if you're really orthodox you may only read it facing in the direction of Oxford, or maybe if you're American Orthodox, Springfield, Massachusetts), after which you may go out to photograph three public signs with errors in them and then post them on the internet.

Cyber-laugh: everything old is new again, haha

debaron@illinois.edu — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 23:30:00 CST

A New York Times report about a spoof of the disjointed television speech that Muammar Qaddafi made to the Libyan people as protests against his regime were gathering steam notes that one viewer signaled his approval of the YouTube clip by "sign[ing] off with the international cyber-laugh, 'Hahaha'" (Isabel Kershner, "Arab World Embraces Israeli's YouTube Spoof of Qaddafi Rant," Feb. 27, 2011, nytimes.com). "Cyber-laugh" may be new, but "haha" is older than English itself.